Will Self

'Reads like early Nabokov: barbed, provocative, virtuosic in his performance of linguistic jokes...rollicking, unsettling and furiously intelligent' Guardian'Full of pathos and penetrating insights into the best and worst in human nature. A consummate performance, it's a book that might finally silence Self's critics' SpectatorThis dark yet hilariously satirical state-of-an-era novel sees Will Self's middle-class, middle-English characters apparently trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors, until one day someone says something to the effect of, 'This way to the gas chamber, please, ladies and gentlemen.'The Quantity Theory of Morality finally solves the equation of time and money that dominates our lives, in a way that is simultaneously deranging, destabilizing and hilarious, showing Self to be both a master of satire and slapstick humour and a sublime and thoughtful critic of the alienation of modern life. With The Quantity Theory of Morality, Self provides the sequel to his award-winning debut of 35 years ago, The Quantity Theory of Insanity. That literary psycho-surgery proved there wasn't enough sanity to go around - now he's established what many of us fear to be the absolute truth: there isn't enough good to go around, either.

A fascinating and unsettling anthology of 32 science fiction short stories in tribute to the prophetic dystopias of New Wave sci-fi pioneer, and literary titan of the twentieth century, J. G. Ballard-featuring Will Self, Iain Sinclair, Christopher Fowler, Chris Beckett, and a new Jerry Cornelius story from Michael Moorcock. Few authors are so iconic that their name is an adjective - Ballard is one of them. Master of both literary and science fiction, his novels such as Empire of the Sun, Crash and Cocaine Nights show a world out of joint - a bewildering, alienating and yet enthralling place. From his rapturously weird takes on contemporary reality to his classic dystopias like The Drowned World and High Rise, Ballard's legacy shaped the future of literature. This first-of-its-kind anthology, featuring our greatest literary and science fiction authors, including the pioneering Will Self, pays tribute to the unique visions of humanity's uncanny and uneasy clash with the future - our empires of concrete - seen through the warped lens of J. G. Ballard. Edited by renowned editors Maxim Jakubowski and Rick McGrath, this collection includes stories by:Will SelfIain SinclairChristopher FowlerChris BeckettMichael MoorcockJeff NoonPreston GrassmannToby LittChristine PoulsonDavid GordonHanna JamesonJames LovegroveRamsey CampbellBarry N. MalzbergPaul Di FilippoSamathan Lee HoweNick MamatasAdrian McKintyRhys HughesAdrian ColePat CadiganAdam RobertsGeorge SandisonGeoff NicholsonA.K. BenedictAndrew HookDavid QuantickLavie TidharJames Grady

''Elaine is not just a serious work of art, but an unexpected act of filial generosity'' GuardianStanding by the mailbox in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her child and husband, an Ivy League academic, inside her house and wonders...is this it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that ends her marriage and upends her life.Based on the intimate diaries Will Self''s mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writer''s attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm of a parent''s interior life prior to his own existence. Perhaps the first work of auto-oedipal fiction, Elaine shows Self working in an exciting new dimension, utilizing his stylistic talents to tremendous effect.

Will's mother's hokey homily, Waste not, want not... hisses in his ears as he oscillates furiously on the spot, havering on the threshold between the bedroom and the dying one... all the while cradling the plastic leech of the syringe in the crook of his arm. Oscillating furiously, and, as he'd presses the plunger home a touch more... and more, he hears it again and again: Waaaste nooot, waaant nooot..! whooshing into and out of him, while the blackness wells up at the periphery of his vision, and his hackneyed heart begins to beat out weirdly arrhythmic drum fills - even hitting the occasional rim-shot on his resonating rib cage. He waits, paralysed, acutely conscious, that were he simply to press his thumb right home, it'll be a cartoonish death: That's all folks! as the aperture screws shut forever.

Když se turista ocitne v cizí zemi – o níž ví jen to, co píšou v turistických průvodcích, nezná místní zvyklosti, místní politický, a už vůbec ne právní systém – ve špatnou dobu na špatném místě, zakládá si na obrovský malér. Opravdový malér nastane ale teprve tehdy, kdy se ukáže, že vlastně nezná ani vlastní manželku, ba ani vlastní děti a že mu to dosud vlastně docela vyhovovalo – to teprve začne ta pravá šaráda. U Willa Selfa se ale kafkovská šaráda postupně mění v conradovskou cestu do srdce temnoty a v tragédii s překvapivým, i když vlastně docela předvídatelným koncem. Hlavní roli v této knize má Pasivita a Nevůle vzít svůj život do vlastních rukou. Selfova další „komická“ kniha, v níž se svým ryze osobitým humorem, jízlivostí a hraním se slovy a významy předkládá parodii, satiru a kritiku turismu, kolonialismu, rasismu, nejrůznějších právních systémů, mezinárodních vztahů, antropologie, neurologie, „břímě“ bílého muže či spíše divadelních bezpečnostních „protiteroristických“ opatření. Kniha získala v roce 2008 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.